NoVA Surveys Inc. Blog

2012-05-14

Have you ever Wonder About Townhouses

Have you ever wonder about townhouse survey prices.... I have always felt that townhouse surveys are priced too high. While, yes it is true that the surveyor still has to spend money sending his crew out to the site. And it is also true that travel time to different sites in Fairfax County can take up to an hour in our lovely traffic (even more in morning and evening rush hour). I have always felt that surveyors make more money on town houses then on single family homes. Single family homes, can some times get complicated. Sometimes they come in the shape of three hundred foot pipestem driveways. And sometimes they have pools, extravagant patios or just a lot of details like walls and fences near that property lines that take a lot of time to locate and show on a survey. Single family homes can sometimes take 5 or 6 hours to survey. Meanwhile, surveyors rarely spend more than an hour on site at a townhouse (not including travel time). It seems to me, that while surveyors generally make money on the work they do. They make more money on townhouses, and sometimes loose some money on other types of surveys. In short, town house surveys (or rather the people who pay for them), help subsidize the cost of a survey done on a lot with a 300 foot driveway or one with a huge pool, pool deck, patio etc.-- Personally, I never felt that was quite fair. Thus my pricing is different than most.